Eudora Welty’s garden topic of Tupelo club’s open meeting

TUPELO – Tupelo Garden Club members invite the public to join them at an open meeting Wednesday from 12:30 to 2 p.m. at Wesley Hall at First United Methodist Church in downtown Tupelo.
The speakers will be Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown and they will discuss their new book, “One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place” ($35, University Press of Mississippi).
Haltom is a garden designer and preservation and maintenance coordinator for the Eudora Welty Garden. Brown is a landscape historian and an award-winning travel and garden writer who focuses on historic gardens and landscapes.
“One time a year, we try to bring in someone interesting to speak to the public,” said Dianne Guyton, publicity chairman for the garden club. “We are fortunate to get these two ladies.”
Near the end of Welty’s life, she still lived in her parents’ house at 1119 Pinehurst St., in the Belhaven area in Jackson. But the garden her mother, Chestina, had lovingly tended, had all but vanished.
A local garden designer started helping to bring it back and by the time Welty died in 2001, a restoration of the lost garden was well under way.
Haltom and Brown write about the restoration of the garden, and photographer Langdon Clay captures the restored garden through the seasons.
The two women will talk about the garden, the history of garden clubs and related topics. Afterward, there will be a book-signing.
Admission is free and light refreshments will be served.
ginna.parsons@journalinc.com